Reference: Abby the Halfing! (Early Access) (Patreon)

Synopsis/Description:

Meet Abby!
Halfling, wannabe Adventurer, secretly-kinky Damsel in Distress, and unwitting star of the Saunterverse!

My links where you can find more Abby: https://linktr.ee/SaunterWing 

The Rant:

It's been a long time coming, honestly.
(which is weird to say, because the first version of this is only 3 years old?)

Anyway, ever since I made this my pinned tweet:

My First Reference: 

I've been looking at it and finding it... lacking.

To be honest, I didn't really expect people to care about SaunterWing or Abby as much as they have, and this sheet reflects both that, and the changing attitudes towards reference sheets.

Before the advent of digital art production and distribution, Reference sheets used to be these very intricate affairs, with five point turns, expression sheets, and shape breakdowns of how to draw the character.

My "template" character, Mr. Basic. 

His three point (front, side, back) turn:

His action poses, breaking down how the character moves and should be referenced. I didn't finish it cuz I just scribbled it up.

An expression sheet to figure out how the character emotes and reacts to specific situations.

And those are just the mandatory bits! 

There's an entire sheet of missing information about how many heads tall he is, what shapes are used to make him, and so on and so forth.

That's started to change recently with the advent of digital. I can't say when it started, but artists are being trusted more with less information, provided the spirit of the character is met and matched. This results in simpler design sheets like the one in the pinned tweet.

As for the original design sheet, it was drawn up on a tablet I didn't intend for professional work in a program I don't normally use for that kind of work.

I also hadn't really expected Abby to become as popular as she did, or that people would have trouble with certain particulars of her design. The end result is that I didn't put as much effort as  I could have. I left her skin and hair tone up in the air until a consistent pattern of choices in fanart forced me to pick one, and I assumed it was obvious to draw her "flat" before figuring out how her breasts attached to her chest, rather than drawing her breasts as one drew her entire figure and getting flabberasted.

The end result is that the sheet works, but it's not as helpful as it should be.

To that end, I'd sketched out a reference sheet for her that I put on the back burner for a while:

I sat on it for a while because the chest issue. You see how the body and her boobs are on two separate layers? Well, that construction is important, but how do you integrate that into a single image while still clearly communicating everything?

The answer is, apparently, a gif, but that didn't really occur to me until after I started rendering the rig for this loop.

So, if it was on the backburner, why dust it off and finish it?

Well, the "Draw your Mutuals poorly" meme. 

It was something I'd hoped to get in on, but the problem is that, without a specific post of her current design upgrades, I was stuck referencing the old design, which had changed significantly since I'd started drawing her (we'll get to that). Either that, or constantly posting the sketch version, which was starting to clog up my media tab on Twitter, since I didn't want to dedicate a tweet to posting something so half finished as an "official" refence.

So, dusting off the sketch for the last time, and remembering to incorporate the new design changes thanks to her new reactimotes, I dove in.

So, as you know from her reactimotes, Abby went from this:

to this:

The obvious change is the introduction of white sclera to make her eyes stand out more, but it goes a little further than that. 

Her chest is a little bit better proportioned so its clear, that while it's a big part of her character (pun intended),  there's also a figure underneath it. Abby is 1/3rd head, 1/3rd boobs and 1/3rd legs. Hopefully this conveys that better than the old design.

Also, in terms of lighting and drawing, there are fewer unnecessary lines, shadows and highlights. It kills the gradient sure, but it also pops the shapes better, and is less of a strain on me as an artist.

I also added leggings, sleeves and a kind of scarf/neckerchief to her wardrobe. The leggings better highlight her thighs and ass, and became mandatory after I received a piece of fanart with her in them and decided it was a necessity going forward:

the fanart: 

As for the shawl and sleeves, I was working on a winter comic, and Abby's traditional outfit at the time didn't make sense for that kind of weather (and given who she is, no, she can't take the cold), so I updated her with some sleeves and a neck wrap to keep her warm:

This not only had the benefit of giving her a plausible "all weather" outfit, but also made her appear slightly more competent in her admittedly vague profession of rogue thief adventurer:

So, that's the design.

Why animate it?

As a flex. 

As one progresses as an indie artist, you tend to find your particular niche that everyone expects from you. That's not to say that you can't deviate from it when you feel like it and are obligated to be "that person," but you should play to your strengths when possible.

Mine is obviously, "animation."

That being said, its really not a great idea to animate your reference sheet. In this instance it works because Abby's idle animation shows off most of what needs to be conveyed about her, and not just in terms of proportions, but also personality. But, say she was a stoic  type with her arms crossed? Well, not very good for showing off her chest, yeah?

But its a good flex on my part, so why not?
And there's nothing saying I can't also render out static images, so no harm no foul. The animation serves as the promo and the reference is posted in the subsequent tweet thread.

The animation was, however, a massive pain.

Big animations, like the one above involving Abby tipping over, are great, because there's a lot of distance between frames, and your brain fills in the blanks for gaps. Subtle animations are harder, because there isn't a lot of leeway, in terms of frames being out of place in the motion path. If something, like a thigh, is off, not only is it hard to figure out, but its easy to notice something is off, and very easy to mess up further by breaking something that was already working. 

It got so bad that, at one point, I ditched the version you're currently watching, set up a new animation, got as far as cleaning up the animation, and decided I didn't like it, before reverting back to the first version. This is also why you save multiple copies before offshooting on an idea; you never know when the original idea will become much more appealing.

But it finally got done, with the renders of the alternate views.

All that was left was the introduction of color. Not a majorly big deal but a tangent I did want to talk about. Abby initially didn't have a skin tone, and once she did, I wanted to keep it simple and limited to a color scheme. What is/was a problem is her eyes and hair, since both are more determined by my linework than by my actual color choices. That's why, if you check the hexcodes for the hair and eye colors, they don't really match up with the reference. Rather they are interpretive, for anyone who wants to vary them up from her skintone, but doesn't want to use their linework to do so. 

Speaking of hexcodes:

IF YOU'RE DESIGNING A CHARACTER, MAKE SURE YOU GET LISTED HEXCODES FOR THE COLORS. IT MAKES COLOR PICKING WAY EASIER!

Let's back up.
What are "Hexcodes?"
Hexadecimal codes are a 6 digit sequence assigned to every color in existence.  Starting with #000000 (pure black) and going to #FFFFFF (pure white), every color in existence is assigned to a code along that spectrum. It makes color referencing whay easier when you can just plop in those codes as a flat, rather than having to guess from existing work. 

For some reason, not a lot of independent designers implement them into their design sheets, which makes guessing colors a nightmare for contracted artists. Either that, or they splotch a list of colors somewhere on the page without indicatin what those colors attach to or their Hexcodes. This is a pain, especially if the reference colors grade into other colors in the environment.

So yeah, if you're gonna put in color reference, PLEASE INTEGRATE HEXADECIMAL CODES INTO YOUR REFERENCE SHEET!

But, overall, I liked how this turned out. Hopefully, it lasts a little longer than 3 years?

What do you think?
Let me know in the comments!
Your feedback lets me know how I'm doing!
Thank you for your continued support and patronage, and I'll catcha over yonder!

-Saunter!